Comparison to Western Art

At the same time as the Tokugawa period, Europe was also going through a golden age of art as well, the Renaissance period, but the growth of art in culture in Europe was not as great as the growth in Japan.

Japanese paintings tended to feature only a few colors, left a lot of blank spaces, wasn't very life like, and sometimes told a story. They were often painted on scrolls, and The art in Europe was quite the opposite. Paintings were life like, full of color, and took up the entire page. They tended to be of a portrait or depict a scene, or landscape. The paintings were painted on canvases or a form of plaster.

The European and Japanese paintings did have some similarities.Both were created for the upper class and to "capture those beautiful moments"